Access your home and work locations in Google Maps

With Google Maps, we’ve made it increasingly easy to save and re-find the places that matter to you. Last year, we introduced the My Places tab which organizes your saved Custom Maps, directions that you’ve previously looked up, and locations you’ve starred, checked-in and rated. Starting today, you’ll also be able to save your home and work locations in Google Maps when signed in with your Google account.

Imagine moving to a foreign country — this means a new city, a new neighborhood, and even a new apartment to call home. That was how I began my summer last year, moving from Boulder, Colorado to Tokyo, Japan. In a new country where blocks, not streets, are labeled and addresses use a different formatting system, finding home was a feat in and of itself. And that’s how the idea to save home and work locations in Google Maps was born.

By saving these locations that are common to you in My Places, you’ll be able to access these addresses by simply typing “home” or “work” when searching or getting directions in Google Maps. Using these keywords will create a drop-down suggestion with the address you’ve set so that you no longer have to type the full address into the search box.

By saving your home and work locations in My Places, you’ll also see special icons to easily identify these locations on the map.

To set your home and work locations, you’ll need to sign in with your Google Account. Once logged in, click the My Places tab in Google Maps and save your home and work locations. From the My Places panel, you can also edit or delete your saved locations by clicking the drop-down to the right of the home or work icons.

With home and work locations saved in Google Maps, we hope to help you navigate your way to these frequently visited places, regardless of where you may be.

Mentoring Organization Applications is Accepted for Google Summer of Code 2012!

Interested in finding bright, enthusiastic new contributors to your open source project? Apply to be a mentoring organization in the Google Summer of Code program. We are now accepting applications from open source projects interested in acting as mentoring organizations.

Now in its eighth year, Google Summer of Code is a program designed to pair university students from around the world with mentors at open source projects in such varied fields as academic research, language translations, content management systems, games, and operating systems. Since 2005, over 6,000 students from 90 countries have completed the Google Summer of Code program with the support of over 350 mentoring organizations. Students gain exposure to real-world software development while earning a stipend for their work and an opportunity to explore areas related to their academic pursuits, thus “flipping bits, not burgers” during their school break. In return, mentoring organizations have the opportunity to identify and attract new developers to their projects as these students often continue their work with the organizations after Google Summer of Code concludes.

This year we are again encouraging experienced Google Summer of Code mentoring organizations to refer newer, smaller organizations they think could benefit from the program to apply. Last year we had 49 of these small organizations join the program and we hope the referral program will again bring many more new organizations to the Google Summer of Code program.

The deadline for applying to be a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code is Friday, March 9th at 23:00 UTC (3pm PST). The list of accepted organizations will be posted on the Google Summer of Code site on Friday, March 16th. Students will then have 10 days to reach out to the accepted organizations to discuss their project ideas before we begin accepting student applications on March 26th.

Please visit our Frequently Asked Questions page for more details. For more information you can check out the Mentor Manual and timeline for and join the discussion group. Good luck to all of our mentoring organization applicants!